1

Back to Normality? US Foreign Policy Under Obama

1


Written by Alexander Anievas, Adam Fabry, Robert Knox

Introduction
Change we can believe in. We all remember the hope-laden slogans of the brilliantly executed
Obama 2008 presidential campaign. This was much less a promise of change so much as a return
to normalcy after the deviant years of the Bush-Cheney regime. Or, so many on the liberal-left
believed. What a difference three years makes. Not since John F. Kennedys inauguration has a
presidency been so symbolically significant and yet so vacuous if not damaging in substantive
foreign policy terms. With US military power engaged on multiple fronts, Obamas 2008
campaign mantra has become a painfully ironic reminder of the pitiful state of US politics and
democracy. So what has changed in US foreign policy since Obamas coming to power?
The truth is not a hell of a lot. Abroad, the war on terror continues unabated, if under
new surreptitious labels. Under Obama, not only has the US military intensified the drone
bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af-Pak) that began under Bush Jr., but has now
expanded targeted strikes into Yemen and Somalia. US military forces remain 80,000 strong in
Afghanistan, providing support to the crony regime of the Karzai clan, whose rule is not even
guaranteed within the heavily fortified Green Zone of Kabul.
2
The prison camp in Guantanamo,
which Obama promised to close down before 2009, persists under increasingly and dangerously
legalistic pretences. The drawdown of US troops from Iraq over 2011 occurred on the schedule
set by the Bush Jr. presidency, breaking a central promise of the Obama campaign.
3
What is
more, the Obama administration actually proposed to leave US military bases in Iraq. It was only
after negotiations with the Maliki cabinet in which US plans were rejected, and all remaining US
forces were forced to withdraw in late December 2011.
4

In the Middle East, Obamas attempts to charm the Muslim world with his hyped up
rhetoric of a new beginning, declared in a speech at Cairo University on 4 June 2009, has
turned out to be just that: a gimmick. While condemning rogue states (such as Iran and Syria),

1
The authors would like to thank the ISJ editors and particularly Alex Callinicos for his extensive comments on an
earlier draft of this article.
2
Earlier this year, Taliban forces carried out massive, coordinated guerilla attacks across Afghanistan, including an
18 hour siege of the capital, Kabul, and simultaneous attacks in three eastern provinces.
3
As Megan Trudell pointed out in this journal (Trudell, 2009), during his presidential campaign Obama pledged to
withdraw the 142,000 troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office [eg. by May 2010]. The confetti from
Obamas inaugural speech had barely been cleaned from streets of Washington, when the President announced the
postponement of US withdrawal to September 2010, and the residual 50,000 troops could continue to engage in
combat operations to protect our ongoing civilian and military efforts. Obama, 2009a.
4
MacAskill, 2011.
2
the US continues to provide financial, military and political support to its allies in the region
(including such bastions of liberalism as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen). More recently, we
have seen the Obama administration attempting to rebuild the previously discredited idea of
humanitarian intervention in toppling the Gaddafi regime in Libya, in order to steer the
revolutionary tide unleashed by the Arab spring in the region. And it doesnt stop here. As recent
dispatches from Washington have revealed, the Obama administration is recalibrating its
attention towards the Asia-Pacific theatre in a Faustian bid to revitalise the faltering US
economy, manage the rise of Chinese power, and rebuild US leadership internationally.
In the light of these dire developments, readers of this journal might easily feel
themselves as being time warped to the 1990s, when discourses of liberal interventionism and
just wars were common parlance on both sides of the Atlantic. This then begs the question as
to how we arrived here? What are the changes and continuities in the Obama administrations
foreign policies? And is there any larger grand strategy lurking behind this?

US Imperialism in Historical Perspective
To understand the Obama administrations foreign policies, we need to first frame it within a
broader historical perspective tracing how deeply embedded it is within US strategic thinking of
the 20
th
century. The guiding thread of this thought is usually referred to as Wilsonianism.
5

This is defined as a combination of putatively universal ideals with US economic self-interests in
an uneasy but potent mix of unilateral and multilateral tactics (multilateralism when possible,
unilateralism when needed) geared towards the construction of a liberal-capitalist international
order
6
under US hegemony. In other words, when possible US policymakers will attempt to
work through international organisations (such as the UN or NATO) or robust allied coalitions.
However, when such coalitions are not forthcoming, US foreign policymakers (from Clinton to
Bush Jr to Obama) are perfectly willing to go it alone (i.e. unilaterally) as exemplified with the
Bush Jrs administrations rejection of NATOs evocation of the collective security principle in
response to the 9/11 attacks.
7
As Obama made clear in 2007, during the Democratic primary

5
See, for example, Ninkovich, 1999.
6
As termed by the historian N. Gordon Levin, 1968.
7
This is further illustrated by the close strategic overlaps between the Bush administration and its Washington
establishment critics (Republican and Democrat alike) in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As a study by
Vivek Chibber well demonstrates: [o]n the basic matter of regime changethere was no objection from either
wing of the foreign policy establishment. The debate was over how Bush should organise the campaign to
depose Hussein, and what the appropriate timing ought to be (2009, 37).
3
elections, I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American
people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened.
8

Most basically stated, the aim of US foreign policy strategy is to facilitate the ceaseless
accumulation of capital buttressed through an open world economic system. Though
immediately identified with President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), the central characteristics
associated with Wilsonianism as an operational baseline for conducting US foreign relations
predates its namesake.
A significant point that needs emphasizing is that Wilsonianism has always entailed a
combination of multilateral and unilateral tactics. In mainstream popular and academic
discussions, the tendency is to counter-pose multilateralism and unilateralism, the former seen as
a defining feature of the liberal-democratic cosmopolitan vision of world order.
9
In contrast, self-
proclaimed realist critics of Wilsonianism identify it with the idealist or utopian tradition in
US foreign policymaking; that is to say, a tradition associated with a nave, legalistic liberalism
which eschews power politics in the pursuit of morally virtuous aims.
10
Now, if realists have been
correct in highlighting some of the deficiencies and contradictions of Wilsonianism as a strategy
and ideology of US foreign policymaking, they have been less successful in explaining its origins.
As the historian Lloyd C. Gardner writes, while radicals may criticise his [Wilsons] nave
moralism and idealism along with the realists a full account of the development of that
outlook is a much more difficult problem. According to Gardner, this was an outlook, which
had developed from a much keener insight into the nature of his [Wilsons] society (and its
needs) than would appear from the realist critique.
11

There is, then, something much more structural to Wilsonianism that escapes realism,
which fails to grasp the role of ideology in foreign policymaking. The significance of
Wilsonianism to President Obamas foreign policy agenda is not that it sets him apart from his
predecessors but that it demonstrates the clear lines of continuity with them. But to fully
understanding these continuities demands a Marxist analysis of the dynamic interaction of social
forces animating the Wilsonian project with its changing international and world economic
environments. In what follows, we briefly sketch the originating socio-historical context from
which Wilsonianism emerged before moving on to consider its relevance as a project for the
continuation of US Empire under the current administration.

8
Obama, 2007. p. 7. It is worth noting that the article, audaciously titled Renewing American Leadership,
appeared in the July/August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs (published by the ultra-establishment Council on Foreign
Relations), which is the chief organ through which the US foreign policy elite talks to itself.
9
This is perhaps best represented within disciplinary International Relations. See for example Ruggie (1996) and
Mandelbaum (2002).
10
For the classic realist critique of Wilsonianism, see Kennan (1951) and Morgenthau (1951).
11
Gardner, 1967, pp205-6.
4

The Open Door Strategy in the Era of Classical Imperialism
The period of classical imperialism (1896-1945) was characterized by a fundamental
contradiction between the simultaneous internationalisation and statisation of capitalist
productive powers whereby the abstract logic of the world market came to increasingly dominate
the fates of each and every state. This was driven by intensified geopolitical competition ensuing
from the synchronized collective outward thrust of rapidly industrializing and newly emergent
capitalist states of the time. With the quantitative multiplication of autonomous centres of
capital accumulation, politically rooted in national-state spaces, came the qualitative
transformation of the rhythms and dictates of geopolitical rivalry.
12
Different states pursued
different foreign policy strategies to compete effectively in this changing international milieu.
These differences were bound to specific trajectories of capitalist development and processes of
class formation related (in time and space) to the overall history of world capitalism. It is with
this in mind that one can understand the emerging Open Door strategy of US foreign
policymaking.
Under the strains of heightened economic competition on the world market typical of
the period, a coalescence of US finance-industrial and political interests concluded that the
marketing of Americas increasing manufacturing surpluses was necessary both to (1) maintain
economic growth and domestic prosperity and (2) circumvent radical socio-political and
economic reforms at home. In other words, to avoid a substantive redistribution of the relative
shares of national income, there had to be an absolute increase in its overall volume. This was only
possible if US state managers and segments of the capitalist class could develop foreign outlets
for US goods and services which were perceived as having developed in surplus of what could be
profitably absorbed by the domestic market.
13
Wilsonianism was a response to these dilemmas.
In essence, then, Wilsonianism represented the steady globalisation of the Open Door
model of non-territorial expansionism
14
originally formulated by Secretary of State John Hay in
the McKinley administrations (1897-1901) attempts to pry open the great Chinese market at the
turn of the 20
th
century. The Open Door stipulated an equality of opportunity for the commerce

12
Here we leave aside the much-debated question of the precise theoretical standing of the international system in
Marxist theories of imperialism. On this very important issue see the contributions in Anievas, 2010.
13
Best illustrated in the historical works of LaFeber (1993, 1998), Sklar (1988) and Parrini (1969). As President
Woodrow Wilson continually reiterated: Our domestic market no longer suffices. We need foreign markets
(President Wilson quoted in Wilson and Link, 1966, Vol. 25, p. 16).
14
It must not be forgotten that the non-territorial form taken by US expansionism both presupposed a long and
violent history of internal colonisation on the North American continent and continuing military interventions in
perceived US spheres of interest. For these reasons, among others, one must not think of the Open Door as the
only purely capitalist model of expansionism as do, for example, Wood (2003) and Gindin and Panitch (2004). For a
useful corrective see Callinicos (2009).
5
of all nations. For Wilson and others, it was viewed as both a key means of promoting US
interests and creating a so-called world community of power and interests, the two being viewed
as mutually complementary. Given the massive economies of scale, enormous domestic market,
and advanced mass production techniques characterising the US political economy, state
managers and corporate capitalists viewed this global equalisation of trade and investment
conditions as necessarily favourable to US-based capitals. This ensured, as President Wilson put
it, that the skill of American workmen would dominate the markets of all the globe.
15

Indeed,[t]he brilliance of liberal US internationalists in this period, with Woodrow Wilson as
their flag-bearer, Neil Smith writes, lay in the implicit realisation that the wedding of
geography and economics undergirding European capital accumulation was not inevitable; that
the coming era could be organised differently; and that economic expansion divorced from
territorial aggrandisement dovetailed superbly with US national interests. In these ways, Smith
continues, US internationalism pioneered a historic unhinging of economic expansion from
direct political and military control over the new markets.
16

However, it is necessary to be cautious here. There is a strong sense in which the non-
territoriality of the US Open Door model of expansionism is misleading. The Wilsonian
strategy always entailed the remaking of sovereign territoriality in ways amenable to US
capitalism and thus entailing its necessary violation through both formal and informal means.
Witness the administrations record in enforcing the Monroe Doctrine in Central and South
America, where Wilson would set out, as he put it, to teach the South American Republics to
elect good men.
17
Wilson ordered more military interventions without declarations of war than
any other US President in the 20
th
century save Clinton (a path that the Obama administration is
fast following along).
18
Yet, at the same time, Wilson is best known in popular and academic
debates for his doctrine of self-determination, which envisages the transformation of the empire-
state system into a plurality of formally sovereign territorial units.
Following Wilsons American exceptionalism line of reasoning, the US leads the
world, because it should and must. One can see this quintessentially Wilsonian motif at work in
Obamas pompous declaration of the end of military operations in Iraq in December 2011.
Unlike the old empires, we dont make these sacrifices for territory or for resources we do it
because its right. There can be no fuller expression of Americas support for self-determination

15
Wilson quoted in Kennedy, 1980, p299.
16
Smith, 2003, pp141-2. The British Empires imperialism of free trade (Gallagher and Robinson, 1953) during
the 19
th
century was, in many ways, the real pioneer. However, the Open Door is not synonymous with Victorian
free trade imperialism: the latter denoted low tariffs and the maintenance of special spheres of interests and the
former demanded equality of commercial opportunities.
17
Wilson, quoted in Knock, 1992, p27.
18
Hoff, 2008, p36.
6
than our leaving Iraq to its people. That says something about who we are.
19
Reading such
remarks justifying US intervention in the country as doing the right thing (just war), one
could easily mistake Obama for his predecessor. The important point here is not simply to
register the stark hypocrisy in all of this, but to illustrate the overwhelming continuities in the
ideological discourse of US imperialism and the social antagonisms they seek to displace. Here,
we find a second dimension of territoriality underlying the Wilsonian form of US imperialism.
Much like the Whig history of the origins of capitalism Marx demolished in the chapter
on So-Called Primitive Accumulation in Capital. Volume 1, US narratives of American
exceptionalism deletes the long and brutal history of US expansionism: first over the Native
Americans on the North American continent, and then throughout the world. Between 1815 and
1870, the US state acquired land (through conquest, fraud or robbery) approximately doubling
the countrys original size. As Gareth Stedman Jones notes, the whole internal history of US
imperialism was one vast process of territorial seizure and occupation. The absence of
territorialism abroad was founded on an unprecedented territorialism at home.
20
In a similar
way, contemporary US policymakers work from a freeze-frame of the contemporary world and
Americas role within it abstracted from any historical view.
No matter who occupies the White House, Wilsons model of keeping the world safe
for democracy (read: US style capitalism) has remained something of a constant. While the
forms of US foreign policy tactics have varied with the interconnected changes in the world
economy, international system and domestic configurations of class forces, the overriding strategic
objectives have not.

US Foreign Policy and World Economic Crisis
The Obama administration came into power at a moment of profound economic and
geopolitical turmoil. The bursting of a speculative bubble in the US housing market the alleged
sub-prime mortgage crisis was already unspooling into a global credit crunch, which at the
time was estimated to cause the global economy losses of at least US $1 trillion.
21
Concomitantly,
US military power projection abroad was experiencing a relative decline as epitomised by the
Russia-Georgia conflict of August 2008. Bogged down in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and
freshly reeling from the first jolts of the global financial crisis, the lame duck administration of
Bush Jr. found itself with few cards to play in dealing with the conflict. The episode represented
the most concrete strain between Russia and the US since the end of the Cold War. It also

19
Obama, 2011.
20
Stedman Jones, 1972, p66.
21
IMF, 2008.
7
brought to the fore simmering tensions within the NATO camp. But despite some sabre-rattling
from Washington, little of substance was actually achieved, as key western European
governments (France, Germany, and Italy in particular), heavily dependent on Russian energy
supplies and quick to avoid any action that might endanger these, diplomatically deferred on the
issue. The post-Cold War manifestation of the Open Door international order, founded upon
the twin pillars of neoliberalism at home and globalisation abroad under US economic and
political dominance, was showing severe signs of weakening. The task set out by the Obama
administration itself, and the hopes of its allies, was that the newly elected reformist president
in Washington was going to reinvigorate this order.
Faced with the twin challenges of a new great recession and the corresponding
geopolitical shifts, the initial response of the Obama administration was to pursue modest fiscal
expansionary policies at home, while engaging in a multilateralist charm offensive abroad. In
February 2009, Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which
provided the US economy with a fiscal stimulus of US$ 787 billion through a combination of tax
breaks and government spending on infrastructure, welfare and education programs.
22
This was
accompanied by successive programmes of quantitative easing (QE) by the US Federal Reserve
effectively meaning the central bank sought to stimulate the economy by printing money and
pumping it into the financial system.
23
Concomitantly, Vice President Joe Biden travelled to
Europe, where he promised to reset tarnished US-Russian relations at the Munich Security
Conference. At the G20 summit in April, Obama personally negotiated a compromise between
France and China, and, at the Summit of the Americas later in the month, promised a new
beginning with Cuba, a gesture also aimed at the hemispheres other radical-leftist
governments. The Obama charm campaign reached its zenith in June 2009, when the President,
in a speech at Cairo University, reached out to the Muslim world, in attempting to mend US-
Muslim relations, which had been severely damaged under the Bush Jr. presidency.
Within the US foreign policy community, as well as the Obama administration itself, this
was often referred to as the new administrations strategy of multilateral retrenchment. This
was music in the ears of the liberal press, who saw this as a confirmation of Obamas healing
power of transforming Americas image abroad.
24
Less diplomatically, we can see this

22
By comparison, Chinese leaders announced a fiscal stimulus package of RMB 4 trillion (US$ 586 billion) in
November 2008. As Jane Hardy and Adrian Budd (2012) point out in an earlier issue of this journal, this represents
the largest economic stimulus package in history, equivalent to 14 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
23
Since the onset of the crisis, the Fed has spent a whopping US$ 1.8 trillion on quantitative easing programmes.
The limitations of government responses to the crisis, in the US and elsewhere, have been covered thoroughly by
this journal since the onset of the crisis.
24
Neoconservatives in the Murdoch-dominated US press snidely referred to this as the Obama apology tour. See
for example Rove, 2009.
8
recalibration of US foreign relations, as an attempt to reconsolidate and maintain US hegemony
on the cheap
25
a redistribution of imperial burden sharing. Indeed, as Daniel Drezdner notes,
this was how allies even interpreted the Obama administrations supposed modesty.
26

Yet, by the time Obama was due to give his first State of the Union address in 2010, the
concrete results of his administrations efforts of rebuilding American leadership were few and
far between. Efforts of orchestrating an internationally coordinated response to the global slump
had largely failed as demonstrated by the empty resolutions of various G20 summits, the
continued stalemate in the Doha trade negotiations, and the currency war with China between
2009 and 2011Following this series of failures the Obama administration very rapidly shifted its
foreign policy tactics.

Tactics of American Empire
The particular form that these tactics took bears a great deal of resemblance to those of the
Bush-Cheney regime that Obama supposedly had broken with. Nowhere is this more evident
than in the continued US intervention in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other states under the aegis
of the war on terror. The Obama administration very pointedly disowned the label global war
on terror in an effort to distance itself from the legacy of George W. Bush. Yet at the same
time, it massively increased the number of operations conducted in the Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
The most spectacular example of this was of course the killing of Osama Bin Laden in
April 2011. This operation was conducted without the express permission of the Pakistani
government and allegedly pursuant to a secret agreement with the Musharraf regime.
27

However, the most far-reaching policy choice here has been the escalation in drone bombings of
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of particular note have been the innovative operational methods
deployed, which include killing secondary members of Al-Qaeda and then bombing their
funerals or rescuers so as to eliminate other, more important, members.
All but the most die-hard Obama supporters have struggled with the fact that this policy
has encompassed the killing of US citizens, as with Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. The fact that al-
Awlakis killing occurred inside of Yemen points to the high level of convergence between the
policies of the Obama and Bush administrations. Whilst some case can be made that Afghanistan
is a conventional war, and so does not need the justification of a war on terror (which could

25
The term hegemony on the cheap is here taken from Colin Duecks (2003/2004) analysis of the Bush Jr
administrations foreign policy.
26
Drezdner, 2011.
27
Walsh, 2011
9
stretch to the border regions with Pakistan), the same can hardly be said of Yemen. Indeed, the
only argument that could be raised here is that of a global war on terrorism and this is precisely
what the Obama administration has done. In a series of speeches by top legal representatives of
the US government the political and legal case for these strikes has been made.
28
For example, in
a speech on 5

March 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder argued that the US deployed military
force [i]n response to the attacks perpetrated and the continuing threat posed by al Qaeda,
the Taliban, and associated forces.
29
As a result,

Our legal authority is not limited to the battlefields in Afghanistan. Indeed,
neither Congress nor our federal courts has limited the geographic scope of our
ability to use force to the current conflict in Afghanistan. We are at war with a
stateless enemy, prone to shifting operations from country to country. Over the
last three years alone, al Qaeda and its associates have directed several attacks
fortunately, unsuccessful against us from countries other than Afghanistan.
30


If all this sounds familiar, it is because it is almost the exact same justification used by the
Bush administration in the infamous 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS). The absence of a
fundamental break in foreign policy between the Bush Jr administrations and the Obama regime
can, on one level, be explained by the noticeable level of personal overlap between the two
administrations. Names that come to mind here include ex-Secretary of Defence Robert Gates
(2006-2011), Timothy Geithner, who after serving as President of the Federal Reserve of New
York under Bush Jr became Obamas Secretary of the Treasury, and Generals Eikenberry,
McChrystal, and Petraeus, whom all held high ranking positions under both administrations.
31

However, the similarities run deeper than this.
One of the more controversial aspects of the 2002 NSS was in its argument that the
United States government would make no distinction between terrorists and those who
knowingly harbour or provide aid to them
32
. Yet this argument was again replicated by Holder,
who argued force could be deployed within a state without its consent after a determination
that the nation is unable or unwilling to deal effectively with a threat to the United States.
33


28
Koh, 2010; Brennan, 2011; and Holder, 2012.
29
Holder, 2012.
30
Holder, 2012.
31
A more detailed study of the continuities in personnel between the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations can be
found in Graff and Apeldoorn, 2011.
32
NSS, 2002.
33
Holder, 2012.
10
Finally, perhaps the most controversial aspect of the 2002 NSS was its doctrine of pre-
emptive self-defence, which argued that the threats posed by stateless terrorists with nuclear
weapons meant that the US could no longer solely rely on a reactive posture.
34
Accordingly, so
the argument went, the understanding of an imminent threat would need to be transformed,
meaning the US could intervene (unilaterally) to prevent emerging threats. This justification has
been reproduced almost word for word by the Obama administrations representatives, with
John O. Brennan bluntly arguing a more flexible understanding of imminence may be
appropriate when dealing with terrorist groups
35
and Holder relying on similar reasoning.
36

One difference that might exist on this front has been the Obama administrations shift
away from a military model based on ground troops to one based on unmanned vehicles. Hence,
there has been the withdrawal from Iraq, completed in December 2011, and the planned
gradual decrease in troop numbers in Afghanistan. Immediately though it should be remembered
that in practice the former was considered as a rational relocation of military power to
Afghanistan, where the Obama administration asserted the real threat was. Furthermore the
Obama administration continued the Bush policy of the troop surge in Afghanistan, vastly
increasing the number of ground troops. Finally, as Patrick Cockburn pointed out in a recent
issue of the London Review of Books the Obama administrations posture of moving to a leaner
military, concentrated around technology is hardly new, indeed it has distinct echoes of George
W. Bushs rhetoric and the shock and awe tactics initially deployed in the invasion of Iraq.
37


Defusing the Arab Spring
Thus with Obamas policy shift things seem to have remained very much the same. Of course, as
noted above, this fundamental unity is not simply with the Bush administration, but is
characteristic of the Wilsonian strategy that has characterised the United States imperial position.
When the Obama administrations initial attempt to engage in multilateral tactics largely failed, it
shifted back to unilateral methods, yet these were naturally shaped by the relative decline in the
USs economic and military position in the global stage as well as domestic exhaustion and
opposition to foreign wars.
The return to the war on terror rhetoric has also marked a more explicit revival of the
language of American exceptionalism that is central to Wilsonianism, and also lay at the heart of

34
NSS, 2002.
35
Brennan, 2011.
36
Holder, 2012.
37
Cockburn, 2012.
11
the Bush administration.
38
Whist initially the Obama administration was quite modest on
Americas exceptional character,
39
leading to outraged sputtering on the part of many
conservative commentators,
40
the expanded justifications for the war on terror have seen the
language of exceptionalism return with a vengeance. Hence, discussions of terrorism are framed
by discussions of American values and the importance of the rule of law and democracy.
41

Nowhere has this strange mix of American exceptionalism and the vacillation between
unilateralism and multilateralism been more visible than in the response of the Obama
administration to the revolutionary processes in the Middle East and North Africa.
The initial events particularly in Tunisia and Egypt caught the Obama administration
by surprise. At the beginning of the Egyptian uprising, various members of the Obama
administration including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden stressed Mubaraks historical role as
friend of the United States.
42
As the uprising progressed, this position began to shift somewhat,
with increasing emphasis placed on the universality of American values of democracy and the
rule of law.
43
Of course, this fact was contradicted by the cans of tear gas and mortar used to
suppress the uprising that had made in America stamped on them. As events moved towards a
decisive confrontation with a geopolitically uncertain outcome the Obama administration
attempted to find a halfway house that would enable support for the uprising, whilst
guaranteeing a regime friendly to its interests. Hence, Hillary Clinton argued that the US
supported an orderly transition,
44
a position that was soon rendered inoperative by the
demands on the street.
The response to Egypt which can be seen as a microcosm of the whole Arab
revolutionary process was indicative of the real problems the Obama administration faced
geopolitically. The ousting of the various dictators (most of whom were at least favourable to US
interests) would have serious geopolitical consequences. This was reinforced by the genuinely
popular character of the uprisings against the regimes, which remained largely free of outside
influences. At the same time, the geopolitical climate rendered the US relatively unable to
intervene in these revolutionary processes. Despite Obamas reconciliation tour, the thought
of the US meddling in Arab affairs was still a problem, there was little ability to craft a

38
Tariq Ali (2010, p73) makes a similar point in his excellent analysis of the Obama presidency at its mid-term,
pointing out that [h]istorically, the model for the current variant of imperial presidency is Woodrow Wilson, no less
a pious Christian, whose every second word was peace, democracy or self-determination, while his armies invaded
Mexico, occupied Haiti and attacked Russia, and his treaties handed one colony after another to his partners in war.
Obama is a hand-me-down version of the same, without even Fourteen Points to betray.
39
Obama, 2009b.
40
Krauthammer, 2010.
41
NSS, 2002.
42
Murphy, 2011; Reuters, 2011.
43
BBC News, 2011.
44
Landler, 2011.
12
multilateral response to the uprisings (owing to the relative decline of the US internationally)
and the US was too invested in these regimes to simply abandon them. These structural
constraints created a vacillating position on the uprisings, whereby the Obama administration
was essentially led by the Arab street, but tried to dampen its revolutionary potential at every
turn.
45

However, these tactics proved much more successful in the case of Libya. Here, the
Obama administration, with a coalition of other imperialist powers, was able to intervene directly
in the revolutionary process and allow Libya to remain open to the interests of the US (and its
allies). Once again, this particular outcome showcases the potent mix of multilateral and
unilateral tactics that characterise US foreign policy.
In terms of multilateralism, the US together with France and the United Kingdom was
able to operate through the Security Council so as to guarantee the result. This was firstly done
through the imposition of an arms embargo under Resolution 1970,
46
whilst ostensibly this was
to prevent further arms reaching the Gaddafi regime, but it also guaranteed that no support for
the Libyan rebels would be forthcoming from Arab revolutionary movements. This created a
situation in which the international community led by the US, the UK and France was the
only possible agent that could intervene in the process. This was duly realised under
Resolution 1973, which authorised a no-fly zone for humanitarian purposes. Russia and China,
which have historically vetoed such Resolutions and have been stressing their rivalry with the
US merely abstained from the vote. This is partly explained by the fact that, when the Libyan
uprising first began, it was in the interests of all of the advanced capitalist countries that the
revolutionary process be brought under control, given the unpredictable geopolitical
consequences that could ensue.
Yet this also gives an insight into the ways in which the Obama administration deployed
unilateral tactics as well. One reason that Russia and China merely abstained from the Security
Council vote, is that they understood the intervention permitted under Resolution 1973 to be a
limited one, focusing purely on humanitarian concerns with no mandate for a regime change
or a ground invasion. Evidently the Obama administration thought differently. But aside from
the way in which the facts played out on the ground, the Libyan intervention was also very
explicitly perceived as a way of re-legitimating US military power. Thus, proponents of
humanitarian intervention inside of the White House, saw this as a way of rescuing that

45
More recently, we have seen Washington working with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Supreme Command of
the Armed Forces (SCAF) in Egypt in an attempt to restablise the situation. See, for example, Schmitt and Cooper
(2012) and Charara (2012).
46
UN Security Council Resolution 1970 (2011), paragraph 9.
13
doctrine from its use by the Bush administration.
47
This outcome was precisely the one opposed
by Russia and China, which is one of reasons for the continuing Syrian deadlock.
Although the Libyan situation has become largely chaotic, the intervention was relatively
successful on the USs terms. There was little popular opposition to the campaign, indeed most
opposition came from within the military itself, and the way in which the Syrian events have
played out show the way in which the debate has been transformed. Thus, in this instance, the
mixture of the exceptionalism of American humanitarian values, together with different tactics
the key features of Wilsonianism do seem to have been relatively successful in securing US
interests in the region. It is clear, however, that this has come up against determined opposition
from Russia and China, and that the particular multilateral option in Libya may have been a
result of the extraordinary conjuncture represented by the insurgent Arab revolutionary process.

Containing China
By the time Obama was taking power in the White House, the credit crunch was spreading to
the real economy, marked by falling levels of economic output globally. However, the effects
of the global slump were uneven: while the US and German economies contracted by 2.4 and 5.0
percent respectively in 2009, China and India were continuing to project robust growth rates of
8.7 and 5.7 percent respectively.
48
The relative transfer of economic power and wealth from what
some have described as the liberal-capitalist heartlands
49
of the US and Western Europe to
South East Asia has recently spawned something of a status anxiety amongst US foreign
policymakers. Indeed, this global shift from West to East, potentially rendering the
international system constructed after World War II almost unrecognisable by 2025, was
already a major theme of the National Intelligence Councils 2008 (NIC) Global Trends 2025: A
Transformed World report. Although, as the report points out, international system is a
misnomer, as it is likely to be more ramshackle than orderly, its composition hybrid and
heterogeneous, as befits a transition that will still be a work in progress in 2025. At the centre of
this global shift is the rapid, yet contradictory-ridden rise of states like Brazil, Russia, India and
particularly China (the BRICs). As the report states:
In terms of size, speed, and directional flow, the transfer of global wealth and
economic power now under way roughly from West to East is without
precedent in modern history. This shift derives from two sources. First, increases in
oil and commodity prices have generated windfall profits for the Gulf States and

47
Calabresi, 2011.
48
IMF, 2010.
49
Van der Pijl, 1998.
14
Russia. Second, lower costs combined with government policies have shifted the
locus of manufacturing and some service industries to Asia.

Growth projections for Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRICs) indicate they
will collectively match the original G-7s share of global GDP by 2040-2050. China
is poised to have more impact on the world over the next 20 years than any other
country. If current trends persist, by 2025 China will have the worlds second
largest economy and will be a leading military power.

These projections strike a familiar chord with the claims of those pundits that have recently
argued that the ascent of leading emerging market economies heralds the future of global
capitalism. Hence, while the NIC report states that the United States is likely to remain the
single most powerful actor, it warns that the United States relative strength even in the
military realm will decline and US leverage will become more constrained.
50

Policymakers in Washington have clearly been taking such claims seriously. Indeed, these
arguments can clearly be traced in the foreign policy strategy of the Obama administration. In a
recent article in Foreign Policy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, writing in a style reminiscent of
Woodrow Wilson himself, laid down the future foreign policy priorities for the administration:

Harnessing Asias growth and dynamism is central to American economic and
strategic interests and a key priority for President Obama. Open markets in Asia
provide the United States with unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade,
and access to cutting-edge technology. Our economic recovery at home will depend
on exports and the ability of American firms to tap into the vast and growing
consumer base of Asia. Strategically, maintaining peace and security across the
Asia-Pacific is increasingly crucial to global progress, whether through defending
freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, countering the proliferation efforts
of North Korea, or ensuring transparency in the military activities of the regions
key players.
51


Clintons words, along with her recent nearly two-week long diplomatic tour of South-East Asia
and the Middle East (including visits to Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Egypt and
Israel) form part of the Obama administrations self-described strategic pivot toward Asia

50
Quotes above are from NIC, 2008, pp,vi; 1.
51
Clinton, 2011.
15
where the Pentagon is now set to send 60 percent of the US fleet by 2020. The new strategy
aims, on the one hand, to reassert US hegemony over the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and
Central Asia, while, on the other, to contain Chinas growing economic, political, and military
influence in the region. This strategy entails a substantial increase of US military presence in the
region, which, despite Defense Secretary Panettas claims to the contrary, appear directly aimed
at checking Chinas rise as a global power.
52

Critical in all of this is maintaining an Open Door in the South China Sea. In a recent
report by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
53
arguing for increased US naval
defence spending, Patrick Cronin and Robert Kaplan emphasise that,

The geostrategic significance of the South China Sea is difficult to overstate. The
South China Sea functions as the throat of the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans
a mass of connective economic tissue where global sea routes coalesce,
accounting for $1.2 trillion in US trade annually. It is the demographic hub of the
21st-century global economy, where 1.5 billion Chinese, nearly 600 million
Southeast Asians and 1.3 billion inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent move vital
resources and exchange goods across the region and around the globe. It is an area
where more than a half-dozen countries have overlapping territorial claims over a
seabed with proven oil reserves of seven billion barrels as well as an estimated 900
trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
54


Further, as Cronin and Kaplan go on to note,


The South China Sea is where a militarily rising China is increasingly challenging
American naval pre-eminence a trend that, if left on its present trajectory, could
upset the balance of power that has existed since the end of World War II and
threaten these sea lines of communication (SLOCs). As the principal guarantor of
global freedom of navigation, the United States has a deep and abiding interest in
ensuring that SLOCs remain open to all, not only for commerce but also for
peaceful military activity, such as humanitarian interventions and coastal defence.
55



52
Perlez, 2012.
53
Founded in 2007, the CNAS exerts significant influence on the foreign policy thinking of the Obama
administration. According to Carlos Lozada (2009) of The Washington Post, In the era of Obama the Center for a
New American Security may emerge as Washingtons go-to think tank on military affairs.
54
Cronin and Kaplan 2012, p5
55
ibid, p7.
16
And although the recent upsurge in diplomatic theatrics over who owns what in the South
China Sea does not appear to be intense enough to heighten the risk of major interstate conflict
in the near term, Cronin and Kaplan maintain that the South China Sea has also become the
epicentre of what appears to be a long-term geopolitical struggle in which classical power politics
and nationalism are intensifying alongside the rise of China.
56
This seems about right,
57
even
though the US-Chinese rivalry goes beyond just the South China Sea.
Indeed, classified diplomatic documents released by Wikileaks further confirm this
picture of simmering geopolitical and economic tensions between China and the US. In a 7
February 2010 meeting with representatives of the major international oil corporations in Lagos,
a senior US official detailed Chinas expanding economic investments and influence on the
African continent. The US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs described China as a very
aggressive and pernicious economic competitor with no morals, which involved itself in Africa
for primarily selfish motives including the securing of votes in the United Nations from African
countries. While denying that Washington viewed China as a military, security or intelligence
threat, the Assistant Secretary cautioned:
There are trip wires for the United States when it comes to China. Is China
developing a blue water navy? Have they signed military base agreements? Are they
training armies? Have they developed intelligence operations? Once these areas
start developing then the United States will start worrying. The United States will
continue to push democracy and capitalism while Chinese authoritarian capitalism is politically
challenging.
58


The terms of the US-Chinese rivalry could hardly be more clearly stated. The stakes of the
conflict are not only about which power dominates the markets and raw materials of those
countries, but also which variety of capitalism (authoritarian versus democratic) will act as the
model to be emulated. Geopolitical and economic competition thus continues to form two sides
of the same coin. Meantime, since at least January 2007, there has emerged a star wars arms
race between the countries. This was supposedly sparked off when the Chinese government shot
down its own weather satellite thus shocking Washington by demonstrating its capability to
fight a space war.
59


56
ibid, p9.
57
For the latest incident of escalation in this long-standing dispute see Branigan, 2012.
58
The Guardian, 2011.
59
The Daily Telegraph, 2011.
17
During the standoff over the weather satellite incident, US officials privately threatened
to take military action if Beijing did not desist. As classified documents show, Washington
responded in February 2008 when it shot down a malfunctioning US satellite to prove that it too
could fight a space war; though US officials denied that this was a military exercise. More recent
cables sent from Secretary Clintons office in January 2010 detail new anti-satellite missile tests
conducted by the Chinese military and emphasize that the Obama administration has retained
the Bush-era concerns over space weapon plans.
60
In particular, Mrs Clinton reiterated that the
military option threatened in the 2008 demarches to China was still valid and reflect the
policy of the United States. As stipulated in the 2008 demarches:
Unfettered access to space and the capabilities provided by satellites in orbit are
vital to United States national and economic security
--Any purposeful interference with U.S. space systems will be interpreted by the
United States as an infringement of its rights and considered an escalation in a crisis
or conflict
-- The United States reserves the right, consistent with the UN Charter and
international law, to defend and protect its space systems with a wide range of
options, from diplomatic to military.
61


In an election year, one can expect jingoistic rhetoric to be pitched a tune higher than usual
(recall Obamas Sputnik moment in his State of the Union 2011 speech). Yet clearly
something deeper is going on here. But, perhaps even more worrying for the immediate future is
the state of US-Iranian relations.


Intimidating Iran
If the Obama administration has so far been relatively successful in defusing the revolutionary
fervour in the Middle East, it has largely been ineffective when dealing with Iran. The question
of how to best deal with Iran represents, as Tariq Ali points out, a lingering conundrum to
American elites: on the one hand, the regime in Tehran is publicly posing itself as an anti-
imperialist, Islamic Republic breathing fire against the Great Satan, while on the other, it
quietly collaborates with it when most needed, whether it came to conspiring with the counter-
revolution in Nicaragua, invading Afghanistan or, more recently, in the rebuilding of post-war

60
Ibid.
61
Aftenposten, 2011.
18
Iraq.
62
However, for Israel the benefits of all this have been few and far between, leading the its
rulers to take a much more downbeat view of Tehrans rhetorical posturing, directed with greater
ferociousness at them, than at their patrons in Washington. In particular, since the prospect of
Iran developing a nuclear programme of its own began to loom on the horizon in the mid-1990s
(which, if realised, would effectively bring Israels monopoly on weapons of mass destruction in
the Middle East to an end), Tel Aviv has exploited its assets in Washington, London, and
elsewhere, in order to galvanise political support for decisive military action against Iranian
nuclear facilities. While the Republicans still ruled in the White House, Washington proved more
than amenable to the idea, matching Tehrans rhetorical attacks (for example, by including Iran
in the administrations axis of evil) and tightening economic sanctions against the regime.
Obamas initial response was tacitly to reject the cowboy diplomacy of his predecessor,
favouring diplomatic dialogue instead, seeking to reach a settlement in the interest of all parties:
stripping Iran of nuclear capability in exchange for economic and political embrace from the US
and its allies. This message was candidly delivered by Obamas Nowruz [Iranian New Year]
message on 20 March 2009, in which the President ensured the people and leaders of the
Islamic Republic that his administration was committed to diplomacy that addresses the full
range of issues before us. Speaking in classical Wilsonian parlance, Obama went on to outline
his hopes for a new day in US-Iranian relations, based on renewed exchanges among our
people, and greater opportunities for partnership and commerce. Its a future where the old
divisions are overcome, where you and all of your neighbours and the wider world can live in
greater security and greater peace.
63
But the timing was unfortunate and the calculations upset
by political ruptures inside Iran following the fraudulent presidential elections in June 2009 and
the suppression of popular dissent by militia violence.
64
As a result, Obamas plans for a historic
reconciliation between the two states were soon set aside for traditional Realpolitik.
Since then, the Obama administration has reverted to the tactics of its predecessor,
seeking to lock in China and Russia the consent of its European allies can be taken for granted
to impose ever stricter economic sanctions on Iran, in the hope that it will strangle the country
and thereby either oust the neoconservative Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his puppet
President Ahmadinejad or force them to come to terms. Should these pressures fail, the use of
military force by US and/or Israeli fighter jets remains a distinct possibility. As Alex Callinicos
notes,

62
Ali, 2010, p48.
63
Cited in Black, 2009.
64
On the Iranian revolt, see Jafari, 2009
19
[t]here seems no enthusiasm for an attack on Iran in Washington. Obama, busy
realigning US global strategy to meet the geopolitical challenge represented by
China, has no desire to step into another Middle Eastern quagmire (and is speeding
up withdrawal from Afghanistan, where recent events have underlined how the
Wests grip is slipping). But Netanyahu will no doubt seek to exploit the US
presidential contest, where the rival Republicans are outdoing themselves in their
protestations of loyalty to Israel, to pressure him into supporting an attack on Iran.
So there may be another war in the Middle East this year.
65


Indeed, while the option of a US-Israel led war against Iran sounds like political lunacy
and a human catastrophe in the making, the possibility of war cannot altogether be ruled out.
There are three reasons for this. Firstly, because the Western powers at large not only Obama,
but also Cameron and Merkel have made it very clear that it will not tolerate any Iranian
nuclear capability, leaving very little room for diplomatic manoeuvring if this should materialise.
While the Obama administration still opposes a pre-emptive attack on Iran, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton recently warned Tehran during her latest visit to Israel that Washington and Tel
Aviv are on the same page and that the US is prepared to employ all elements of American
power to prevent Iran developing a nuclear weapon.
66
However, US support for Israel does, of
course, not stop at mere rhetorical assurances, but also includes a deepening of financial and
military aid to Tel Aviv. On 27 July 2012 Obama reiterated Washingtons unshakable
commitment to Israel by signing the US-Israel Enhanced Security Act, which pledges an
additional US $ 70m in military aid to Israel in order to help it expand its short-range rocket
defence system.
67
Moreover, the US has recently beefed up its military presence in the Persian
Gulf, in order to counter Iran. For example, it has deployed one of the navys oldest transport
ships, The Ponce, which has been thoroughly redesigned as a mobile forward base capable of
carrying out important military operations, such as reconnaissance, sabotage and direct strikes
across the region.
68
Secondly, Tehrans threat of retaliation should not be discounted, especially
in light of the Iranian militarys downing of an unarmed US spy plane in late 2011 or its bullish
stance during the standoff in the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in early 2012.
69


65
Callinicos, 2012, pp6-7.
66
BBC News, 2012.
67
Al Jazeera, 2012.
68
Shanker, 2012.
69
The Strait of Hormuz is of major geopolitical significance. . Located between the Gulf of Oman in the southeast
and the Persian Gulf, with Iran controlling the northern coast and the United Arab Emirates and Oman controlling
the southern coast of the strait, it is the only sea passage to the open ocean for large areas of the oil exporting
Persian Gulf and is one of the worlds most strategically important choke points. Approximately 15 million barrels
20
Finally, there are also Washingtons allies in the Middle East to be considered.
70
Here,
recent reports suggest that Israeli leaders, led by the trigger-happy troika of prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, defence minister Ehud Barak, and minister of strategic affairs Moshe
Yaalon, seem to have succumbed, even welcomed, the prospect of going at it alone and
demonstrating their resolve at a time when their security is threatened both from abroad, not
only by the prospect of Iran developing nuclear weapons, but also by the convulsions of the
Arab Spring, and from within, by simmering public discontent against social inequality. Tel
Avivs increasing disposition towards a unilateralist stance vis vis Iran was bluntly described by
Yaalon in a New York Times Magazine interview in early 2012, where he stated,
Our policy is that in one way or another, Irans nuclear program must be
stopped It is a matter of months before the Iranians will be able to attain military
nuclear capability. Israel should not have to lead the struggle against Iran. It is up to
the international community to confront the regime, but nevertheless Israel has to
be ready to defend itself. And we are prepared to defend ourselves in any way and
anywhere that we see fit.
71


The aim of Israeli leaders seems to be clear: stopping Irans nuclear project by all means
necessary. As a result, Tel Aviv is now engaged in a bloody, covert, and ongoing war with
Tehran in order to remove important brains from the nuclear programme. Since 2010, a
number of high-ranking members in the Iranian nuclear project have been killed in attacks,
which are widely presumed to have been carried out, either directly by Mossad, the Israeli
intelligence agency, or with tacit support from the Israelis (through recruited operatives, such as
the Jundallah, a Pakistani-based Sunni group, which is ranked as a terrorist organisation by both
Iran and the US).
72
While Iran has so far restrained from using military force against these
intimidations, the political temperature in the region is likely to remain hot in the autumn.


Conclusion
In rhetorical terms the current administration is much more in-synch with President Woodrow
Wilsons model of employing international law in the service of US force than the inconvenient

of oil, one-fifth of the worlds total, passes through the strait every day in tankers. US Energy Information
Administration, 2011.
70
Here, we focus only on Israel, as it remains the key agent of US imperialism in the region.
71
Cited in Bergman, 2012 (emphasis added by authors).
72
The US has condemned these assassinations, while Israel has officially denied any involvement in them (although
memos and field reports from the US intelligence services show that Mossad has run a programme for recruiting
Jundallah members). See Bergman (2012) and Perry (2012).
21
truths of unbridled US unilateralism uttered by the swaggering cowboys of the Bush
administration. Yet looking beyond this surface image a different picture emerges. The Obama
administration has continued and even expanded many of the Bush Jr. administrations
unilateral policies, often adopting wholesale the legal arguments of its predecessor. Equally,
the Bush Jr. administration very frequently had recourse to international institutions to
legitimate its occupations, to coordinate anti-terrorist action and so on. On reflection then,
there is a fundamental unity between the two administrations. This unity points us to the fact
that official multilateralism is not a Weltanschaaung [worldview] but an imperialist strategy
which can coexist with its supposed opposite, unilateralism, without much difficulty.
73
The
more principled elements of the liberal left have been quick to cry betrayal over Obamas
similarities with the Bush-Cheney regime. Yet to do so is to fundamentally misunderstand the
nature of US foreign policy and the imperatives that drive it. As we argue, US foreign policy has
been structured by an essentially Wilsonian orientation produced by the insertion of the
United States in the global social relations of capitalism. Consequently, the only way to radically
transform this foreign policy is to transcend capitalism itself. This is the only change we can
believe in.









References
Aftenposten, 2011, Second Demarche for China Regarding Chinas January 2007 Anti-Satellite
Test, Aftenposten, 4 January 2011. Available on:
http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/wikileaksdokumenter/article3971894.ece.
Ali, Tariq, 2010, The Obama Syndrome. Surrender at Home, War Abroad, London: Verso.
Al Jazeera, 2012, Obama signs bill for Israel missile defence, 27 July 2012. Available on:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/07/201272718113852794.html.
Anievas, Alexander (ed), 2010, Marxism and World Politics: Contesting Global Capitalism, New York:

73
Mieville, 2008, p83.
22
Routledge.
BBC News, 2011, In quotes: Reaction to Egypt protests (30 January 2011). Available on:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12316019.
2012, Hillary Clinton issues new warning to Iran on Israel visit, 16 July 2012.
Available on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18852286.
Bergman, Ronen, 2012, Will Israel attack Iran?, New York Times Magazine, 25 January 2012.
Black, Ian, 2009, Barack Obama offers Iran new beginning with video message, The
Guardian, 20 March 2009. Available on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/20/barack-obama-video-iran.
Branigan, Tania, 2012 China Lambasts US over South China Sea Row, The Guardian, 6 August.
Available on: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/06/china-us-south-china-sea
Brennan, John O., 2011, Strengthening our Security by Adhering to our Values and Laws.
Available on: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/16/remarks-john-
o-brennan-strengthening-our-security-adhering-our-values-an.
Calabresi, Massimo, 2011, Why the U.S. Went to War: Inside the White House Debate on
Libya, Time (March 20). Available on: http://swampland.time.com/2011/03/20/why-
the-u-s-went-to-war-inside-the-white-house-debate-on-libya.
Callinicos, Alex, 2009, Imperialism and Global Political Economy, Cambridge: Polity Press.
2010, The Bonfire of Illusions: The Twin Crises of the Liberal World, Cambridge: Polity Press.
2012, Rumors of Crisis, Revolution and War, International Socialism, No. 134, Spring
2012.
Charara, Nasser, 2012, Brotherhood, SCAF, and US: The Three Way Tango, Alakhbar
(English version), 27 June 2012. Available on: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/8982.
Chibber, Vivek, 2008, American Militarism and the U.S. Political Establishment: The Real
Lessons of Iraq in Leo Panitch and Colin Leys (eds.) Socialist Register 2009: Violence Today
Actually Existing Barbarism?, London: Merlin Press: pp. 23-53.
Clinton, Hillary R., 2011, Americas Pacific Century, Foreign Policy, November 2011.
Cockburn, Andrew, 2012, Drones, Baby, Drones, London Review of Books, Vol. 34, No. 5, 8
March 2012, pp15-16.
Drezner, Daniel W., 2011, Does Obama Have a Grand Strategy?, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No.
4, July/August 2011.
Dueck, Colin, 2003/2004, Hegemony on the Cheap: Liberal Internationalism from Wilson to
Bush, World Policy Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4, Winter 2003/2004. Available on:
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj03-4/dueck.html.
23
Gallagher, John, and Ronald Robinson, 1953, The Imperialism of Free Trade, The Economic
History Review, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp1-15.
Gardner, Lloyd C., 1967, American Foreign Policy 1900-1921: A Second Look at the Realist
Critique of American Diplomacy, in Barton J. Bernstein (ed), 1968, Towards a New Past:
Dissenting Essays in American History, New York: Pantheon Books.
Gindin, Sam, and Leo Panitch, 2004, Global Capitalism and American Empire, London: Merlin
Press.
de Graff, Nana and Bastian van Apeldoorn, 2011, Varieties of US Post-Cold War Imperialism:
Anatomy of a Failed Hegemonic Project and the Future of US Geopolitics, Critical
Sociology, Vol. 37, No. 4, July 2011, pp403-427.
Hardy, Jane and Adrian Budd, 2012, Chinas capitalism and the Crisis, International Socialism,
No. 133, Winter 2012.
Holder, Eric, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at Northwestern University School of
Law. Available on: http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2012/ag-speech-
1203051.html.
IMF, 2008, World Economic Outlook, April 2008.
2010, World Economic Outlook, April 2010.
Jafari, Peyman, 2009, Rupture and revolt in Iran, International Socialism, No. 124, Autumn 2009.
Kennan, George F., 1951, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kennedy, David M. 1980, Over Here: The First World War and American Society, New York: Oxford
University Press.
Koh, Harold, 2010, The Obama Administration and International Law. Available on:
http://www.state.gov/s/l/releases/remarks/139119.htm.
Krauthammer, Charles, 2010, Obama only believes in his own exceptionalism. Available on:
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/10/charles-krauthammer-obama-only-
believes-in-his-own-exceptionalism.
LaFeber, Walter, 1993, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865-1913, 4 volumes, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
1998, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898, 35th anniversary
ed, Cornell paperbacks, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Landler, Mark, 2011, Clinton Calls for Orderly Transition in Egypt, New York Times (30
January 2011). Available on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/world/middleeast/31diplo.html.
Levin, Gordon N., 1968, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
24
Lozada, Carlos, 2009, Setting Priorities for the Afghan War, The Washington Post, 7 June 2009.
Available on:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/05/AR2009060501
967.html.
MacAskill, Ewen, 2011, Iraq rejects US request to maintain bases after troop withdrawal, The
Guardian (21 October 2011). Available on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/21/iraq-rejects-us-plea-bases.
Mandelbaum, Michael, 2002, The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in
the Twenty-First Century, 1st ed., New York: Public Affairs.
Mieville, China, 2008, Multilateralism as Terror: International Law, Haiti and Imperialism,
Finnish Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 19, pp63-92. Available on:
http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/783.
Morgenthau, Hans J., 1951, In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American
Foreign Policy, 1st ed., New York: Knopf.
Murphy, Dan, 2011, Joe Biden says Egypts Mubarak no dictator, he shouldnt step down ,
Christian Science Monitor (27 January 2011). Available on:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/0127/Joe-Biden-says-Egypt-s-
Mubarak-no-dictator-he-shouldn-t-step-down.
National Intelligence Council (NIC), 2008, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World.
Available on: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html.
National Security Strategy (NSS), 2002. Available on:
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/.
Ninkovich, Frank A., 1999, The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy Since 1900, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Obama, Barack 2007, Renewing American Leadership, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 4,
July/August 2007, pp2-16.
2009a, Responsibly Ending the War, Speech at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, 27
February 2009. Available on: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-
of-President-Barack-Obama-Responsibly-Ending-the-War-in-Iraq).
2009b, News Conference by President Obama (4 April 2009). Available on:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/News-Conference-By-President-Obama-
4-04-2009.
2011, Remarks by the President and the First Lady on the End of the War in Iraq, Fort
Bragg, North Carolina, 14 December 2011. Available on:
25
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/14/remarks-president-and-first-
lady-end-war-iraq.
Parrini, Carl P., 1969, Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, 1916-1923, Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburg Press.
Perlez, Jane, 2012, Panetta Outlines New Weaponry for Pacific, New York Times, 1 June 2012.
Available on: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/world/asia/leon-panetta-outlines-
new-weaponry-for-pacific.html.
Perry, Mark, 2012, False Flag, Foreign Policy, January 2012.
Reuters, 2011, US urges restrain in Egypt, says government stable (25 January 2011).
Rove, Karl, 2009, The Presidents Apology Tour, The Wall Street Journal (23 April 2009).
Ruggie, John G., 1996, Winning the Peace: America and World Order in the New Era, New York:
Columbia University Press.
Schmitt, Eric, and Helene Cooper, 2012, Egypt Results Leave White House Relieved but
Watchful, New York Times, 24 June 2012. Available on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/world/white-house-relieved-over-egypt-
announcement.html
Shanker, Thom, 2012 Floating Base Gives U.S. New Footing in the Persian Gulf, New
York Times (11 July): http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/world/middleeast/the-
navy-ship-ponce-reflects-the-new-united-states-way-of-war.html
Sklar, Martin J. 1988, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916: The Market, the
Law, and Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Neil, 2003, American Empire: Roosevelts Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
The Daily Telegraph, 2011, Wikileaks: US and China in Military Standoff in Space, The Daily
Telegraph, 2 February 2011. Available on:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8299495/WikiLeaks-US-and-
China-in-military-standoff-over-space-missiles.html.
The Guardian, 2011, US Embassy Cables: US Monitors China and Its Expanding Role in
Africa, The Guardian, 8 December 2011. Available on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/250144.
Trudell, Megan, 2009, Obamas 100 Days, International Socialism, No. 123, Summer 2009.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970, Peace and Security in Africa. Available on:
http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/unsc_resolutions11.htm.
United States Energy Information Administration, 2011, Strait of Hormuz, World Oil Transit
26
Chokepoints, 30 December 2011. Available on: http://www.eia.gov/countries/regions-
topics.cfm?fips=WOTC#hormuz.
van der Pijl, Kees, 1998, Transnational Classes and International Relations, London: Routledge.
Walsh, Declan, 2011, Osama bin Laden mission agreed in secret 10 years ago by US and
Pakistan, The Guardian (9 May 2011). Available on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/09/osama-bin-laden-us-pakistan-deal.
Wilson, Woodrow, and Arthur S. Link, 1966, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 69 volumes,
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wood, Ellen Meiksins, 2003, Empire of Capital, London: Verso.